Red Mosquito

I heart you Peter.

I less than three you, Joey.

Birds in Hell wrote:

Blenheim Augustine wrote:And as a counterfactual; Pearl Jam with bad lyrics is just Creed.

Yeah, not so much.

Creed could never write Grievance.

Pearl Jams music isn't all that bland. There are some pretty great things going on throughout their career; and not so great things. But in the end I think Vedders vocals keep me coming back no matter how much his voice may deteriorate from prior glory. I can't put my finger on or say for certain what aspect of music is what tickles my fancy so I think in the end its a combination of all of it. Music cant really be objective because there are too many emotional and personal factors involved.

The only reason people compare Creed to Pearl Jam is the soaringness of their songs (which can be prevalent in any style) and Stapp's singing style that is a bad Adam Sandler caricature of early Eddie Vedder.

Strat wrote:Music cant really be objective because there are too many emotional and personal factors involved.

That's art's X factor and the reason I love it all so much. Of course we can get into theory and technique and all of that. There can be and should be a set of rules for that critical discussion. But in the end, it's that personal and/or emotional connection that you just can't dissect or argue out.

cutuphalfdead wrote:The only reason people compare Creed to Pearl Jam is the soaringness of their songs (which can be prevalent in any style) and Stapp's singing style that is a bad Adam Sandler caricature of early Eddie Vedder.

Word.

The slightly disturbing elephant in the room for many years has been how much PJ fans tend to know about Creed. "If you like this, go listen to Creed." It's like an Amazon recommendation.

Creed were pretty fucking big for a couple years though. It was hard to not know about them.

That makes sense. I guess in the UK we know some of their singles, and I'm sure they have their fans (somewhere), but I personally know next to nothing about them other than 'Arms Wide Open'.

Also, I wasn't meaning you when I mocked knowing too much about Creed

crrrn yrr teeeyykk mrrrr harrrrreeerrr *bee daa bidddly dee* tooo a paleeerrce.. whrre i crrnnn deeeeeh

Those Creed shreds videos are hilarious.

harmless wrote:To be fair, the reason I like great lyrics from PJ is that the vocals are so good. When the vocal and delivery is great but the lyrics aren't, it's pretty jarring. (And vice versa.)

Part of writing great lyrics is fitting word and phrase to the context and delivery. I think when people talk about whether or not they care about lyrics, they're talking about lyrics the way you might think of a poem...as an artfully crafted expression of thought that uses form and phrase to attempt something beyond the simple profundity of normal written communication.

The problem with this is that lyrics exist within the confines of the music...they're made to order for that purpose....and they either feed the performance or they deter from it.

Sometimes being a strong lyrical writer just means knowing that, within the context you and the band have already created, if you're going to slide your vocals down the scale a bit just before a transition into a big chorus in the hopes of "selling" that transition, a headshake of a phrase like "someone who takes the rope, and just lets go" is an affecting fit for the emotion inherent to that delivery. Or that, as the first drops of watery piano starts sprinkling over the ominous but driving bedrock already laid down, "Hurricane has the trade winds blowin'" is the kind of phrase that works to enhance that growing sense of danger. Then, with that moment laid down and a need to spike upwards lest the vocal melody become mundane, "gale force" is a wonderful phrase to yelp out for what will ultimately feel like a semi-panicky cry within the song.

At the end of the day, saying the vocal melody and performance matter but lyrics don't doesn't add up, because the lyrical construction is there to enhance both those entities. Although if I'm wrong, please say so and we can start a sign campaign on the new tour for a lyrical reworking of Even Flow into a song called "I Really Really, Really Really, Really Miss You...

Spoiler: show

....Adolf Hitler."

Nobody besides us and the band would even notice.

McParadigm wrote:

harmless wrote:To be fair, the reason I like great lyrics from PJ is that the vocals are so good. When the vocal and delivery is great but the lyrics aren't, it's pretty jarring. (And vice versa.)

Part of writing great lyrics is fitting word and phrase to the context and delivery. I think when people talk about whether or not they care about lyrics, they're talking about lyrics the way you might think of a poem...as an artfully crafted expression of thought that uses form and phrase to attempt something beyond the simple profundity of normal written communication.

The problem with this is that lyrics exist within the confines of the music...they're made to order for that purpose....and they either feed the performance or they deter from it.

Sometimes being a strong lyrical writer just means knowing that, within the context you and the band have already created, if you're going to slide your vocals down the scale a bit just before a transition into a big chorus in the hopes of "selling" that transition, a headshake of a phrase like "someone who takes the rope, and just lets go" is an affecting fit for the emotion inherent to that delivery. Or that, as the first drops of watery piano starts sprinkling over the ominous but driving bedrock already laid down, "Hurricane has the trade winds blowin'" is the kind of phrase that works to enhance that growing sense of danger. Then, with that moment laid down and a need to spike upwards lest the vocal melody become mundane, "gale force" is a wonderful phrase to yelp out for what will ultimately feel like a semi-panicky cry within the song.

At the end of the day, saying the vocal melody and performance matter but lyrics don't doesn't add up, because the lyrical construction is there to enhance both those entities. Although if I'm wrong, please say so and we can start a sign campaign on the new tour for a lyrical reworking of Even Flow into a song called "I Really Really, Really Really, Really Miss You...

Spoiler: show

....Adolf Hitler."

Nobody besides us and the band would even notice.

Nope, not wrong, I agree with this. The main issue with latter PJ might be that the delivery doesn't match the intent, lyrically or performance-wise. Although to be fair, we only really have the one album (Backspacer) where that happens. And it's because they tried to branch out into 'fun' without being able to let go of their firey intensity or sincerity. Hopefully Lightning Bolt will be less on the fun side. To be honest the tracks which felt 'fun' were always part of darker albums, from my experience. Like 'Get Right'.

McParadigm wrote:

harmless wrote:To be fair, the reason I like great lyrics from PJ is that the vocals are so good. When the vocal and delivery is great but the lyrics aren't, it's pretty jarring. (And vice versa.)

Part of writing great lyrics is fitting word and phrase to the context and delivery. I think when people talk about whether or not they care about lyrics, they're talking about lyrics the way you might think of a poem...as an artfully crafted expression of thought that uses form and phrase to attempt something beyond the simple profundity of normal written communication.

The problem with this is that lyrics exist within the confines of the music...they're made to order for that purpose....and they either feed the performance or they deter from it.

Sometimes being a strong lyrical writer just means knowing that, within the context you and the band have already created, if you're going to slide your vocals down the scale a bit just before a transition into a big chorus in the hopes of "selling" that transition, a headshake of a phrase like "someone who takes the rope, and just lets go" is an affecting fit for the emotion inherent to that delivery. Or that, as the first drops of watery piano starts sprinkling over the ominous but driving bedrock already laid down, "Hurricane has the trade winds blowin'" is the kind of phrase that works to enhance that growing sense of danger. Then, with that moment laid down and a need to spike upwards lest the vocal melody become mundane, "gale force" is a wonderful phrase to yelp out for what will ultimately feel like a semi-panicky cry within the song.

At the end of the day, saying the vocal melody and performance matter but lyrics don't doesn't add up, because the lyrical construction is there to enhance both those entities. Although if I'm wrong, please say so and we can start a sign campaign on the new tour for a lyrical reworking of Even Flow into a song called "I Really Really, Really Really, Really Miss You...

Spoiler: show

....Adolf Hitler."

Nobody besides us and the band would even notice.

I'd be all for it if Ed could actually make it sound great.

Let's be honest. These aren't great lyrics:

"I miss you already, yeah.
I miss you all day.
I miss you already, yeah.
I miss you always."

But the superb delivery makes them work.

harmless wrote:Let's be honest. These aren't great lyrics:

"I miss you already, yeah.
I miss you all day.
I miss you already, yeah.
I miss you always."

But the superb delivery makes them work.

we could make an entire thread of so-so lyrics that sound awesome when eddie vedder sings them

warehouse wrote:

harmless wrote:Let's be honest. These aren't great lyrics:

"I miss you already, yeah.
I miss you all day.
I miss you already, yeah.
I miss you always."

But the superb delivery makes them work.

we could make an entire thread of so-so lyrics that sound awesome when eddie vedder sings them

Indeed. So maybe all this moaning about lyrics (on my part) is a red herring. His delivery used to be so powerful, and the problem might just be that he doesn't 'act' songs right anymore. There's a certain amount of method acting in reading poetry, and I'm sure that's true of songs as well.

isn't is "i miss you always"?

That's what I wrote. But one of them is 'all day'. I might've got them the wrong way round.